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Abbott, Dr Ruth
Job Title: Lecturer and Junior Research Fellow
College: Worcester
Period/ Subject: 18th Century; Romantics; Victorians
Email address: ruth.abbott@ell.ox.ac.uk; ruth.abbott@worc.ox.ac.uk
Research Interests:
My doctoral research was on William Wordsworth's early blank verse - specifically on the beginnings of his never-completed project of writing the first great philosophic poem, 'The Recluse', pursued through in depth study of his early manuscript notebooks. I am currently turning this into a book on all Wordsworth's blank verse writing 1770-1850, as well as writing a reading guide to 'The Prelude' for Edinburgh University Press's 'Reading Guides to Long Poems' series and a chapter on 'Wordsworth's Prosody' for the Oxford Handbook to William Wordsworth. My next book is a larger study of blank verse in English - I am currently working on George Eliot's poetry and manuscript notebooks as part of this project. My abiding research interests include blank verse, prosody and versification, style, reading practices especially the practice of reading aloud, poetics, 17th, 18th, and 19th century poetry, 17th, 18th and 19th century philosophy, the essay form, literary criticism, and drafting practices and manuscript studies.
Teaching Areas:
I teach on the literature of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, including Mods Paper 2 (Victorian Literature), FHS Paper 5 (1642-1742), FHS Paper 6 (1742-1832), and related dissertations and special authors. I also teach the Introduction to Literary Studies paper.
Recent Publications:
'Nostalgia, Coming Home, and the End of the Poem: On Reading William Wordsworth's Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', Memory Studies 3.3 (2010), 1-11
‘Decisions of an Alarmingly Personal Nature, or, What I Think About William Wordsworth’, Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 6:1 (2007), 114-122
‘T.S.Eliot’s Ghostly Footfalls: The Versification of Four Quartets’, The Cambridge Quarterly, 34:4 (2005), 365-385
Other Information:
To mark eight centuries of transformative academic thought, in 2009 Cambridge University launched Cambridge Ideas, an ongoing series of audio and video productions that present their cutting edge research together with comment and opinion on matters of global significance. There is a short film which Cambridge Ideas made about my research on William Wordsworth's manuscript notebooks available here.
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